Morocco expands the FORSA programme for entrepreneurs with new sources of finance
The FORSA programme, created by the Moroccan government in 2022 to help finance business projects, continues to grow. As announced by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Green and Digital Economy, new financing entities have joined the programme, which will increase its scope and help more entrepreneurs to obtain the financing they need to start up or expand their businesses.
New financial institutions
Specifically, the aforementioned ministry, through the Moroccan Society of Tourism Engineering (SMIT), has consolidated this initiative through agreements with two major Moroccan financial institutions: Crédit Agricole du Maroc and Al Barid Bank.
Crédit Agricole du Maroc, based in Rabat, was founded in 1961 with the aim of offering financing to farmers. Since the 1990s, it has also expanded its business to the agri-food sector, real estate lending and other sectors of the country's economy.
Despite this, it is still the leader in rural finance, with more than 108 billion dirhams in loans.
Al Barid Bank was created in 2010 as a subsidiary of Barid Al-Maghrib, the Moroccan postal service. Its strength is its strong presence throughout the country, with an extensive network of more than 2,000 branches and 900 ATMs, which makes it an ideal partner for the project.
Sources from the programme point out that the incorporation of these two financial institutions into the FORSA programme will enable some 1,700 candidates to put their business projects into practice.
Access to the programme
The loans established in the programme will be available to entrepreneurs who meet the programme's requirements, as well as to businesswomen who have completed the FORSA Academy training programme and whose projects have been approved by the financing committee.
According to the information provided by the Ministry, candidate entrepreneurs will be able to obtain loans of up to 100,000 dirhams (around 10,000 euros) at preferential interest rates of between 1.75% and 2%, depending on the location of the project, with a repayment period of up to seven years, with a two-year grace period.
Figures
The head of the programme, Fatim-Zahra Ammor, Minister of Tourism, Handicrafts and Social Economy, explained that FORSA will enable the creation of more than 40,000 jobs between 2022 and 2023, thanks to its programmes not only for financing, but also for accompanying and training entrepreneurs.
In the two years that the programme has been running, more than 300,000 applications for financing have been received. So far, the projects of more than 21,000 entrepreneurs have already been financed, 76% of whom are young people and 32% are women.
